Nothing had prepared me for a Yejide who thought she got pregnant on a mountain. Didn’t know what to say to her. I ate my breakfast and watched her closely. Listened to her talk. By the time the last fried yam was gone, it was obvious she didn’t think she’d got pregnant on that damned mountain. She was convinced she had.
I placed the tray on the bedside table, pulled Yejide close. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘You need to rest, sleep a bit more.’
‘You don’t believe me.’
‘I didn’t say that.’
She wriggled out of my arms. ‘You haven’t said you believe me either, you’ve just been eating all this time. You are not even excited or happy. You haven’t said congratulations yet and you’ve had your coffee, so it’s not that.’
She wanted me to congratulate her. For getting pregnant on a mountain.
‘Akin?’ She gripped my hand, her nails dug into my palm. ‘Do you believe me? Tell me, do you believe me?’
‘Things like that don’t happen. You need to stop going to those places with Moomi. I’ve told you that before. All those people are liars, total conmen.’
She let go of my hand. ‘Your mother did not go with me.’
‘What? You are going to those crooks all by yourself now?’
‘You need to believe.’ She frowned, shook her head. ‘Sometimes I feel sorry for you.’
‘What?’
‘You don’t believe anything.’
‘What is all this? Because I don’t believe a man in a green robe waved a wand and made you pregnant?’
She sighed. ‘He didn’t use a wand, I carried a – Never mind, you’ll just think it’s bizarre.’
‘I already think it’s bizarre. What did you carry? God, I can’t believe we are having this conversation.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ She smiled, laying a hand on her belly. ‘You know what? I’ll go and get tested at the hospital soon and then you’ll believe too that something special happened on that mountain. I really think I might be pregnant.’
‘My God.’ I felt like I was talking to a stranger. ‘Yejide, let me make this clear. You did not get pregnant on that mountain. If you were not pregnant when you went up, you were not pregnant when you came down.’ I put a hand on her knee. ‘Do you understand me?’
‘Akin. In nine months, you’ll know they are not crooks.’ She held my chin, kissed my nose. ‘You’ll see. Now, let’s talk about something else.’
The nose-kissing did it. Opened my eyes to the fact that I needed to do something before she lost her mind. At some point that Sunday morning, I decided it was time to get her pregnant. End all the crazy visits to priests and prophets once and for all. But first, I had to wait until she was ready.
‘I may be going to Lagos next weekend,’ I said.
‘What are you going to do in Lagos?’
‘I need to see Dotun about some investments.’
‘Dotun and investments? Just be careful with your brother; sometimes I think he is nothing but trouble.’
She was wrong about being pregnant, but she was right about Dotun.
8
My period was due the week after my visit to the mountain. It didn’t show. By the end of the month my breasts were so tender that putting on a bra aroused me. I was vomiting every morning at 7 a.m. like clockwork.
I was sure that I was pregnant and I believed my body was telling me things a test would soon confirm. I knew the test had to come before any form of real celebration, but I was excited about how wonderful everything would be as soon as the doctors confirmed that I was pregnant. I did not talk to Akin about what was going on in my body because I did not want him to puncture my hopes. We were not exactly speaking to each other. He spent most evenings at the flat he rented for Funmi. I spent some of my evenings examining my stomach from different angles in the bathroom mirror.
‘What are you doing?’ Akin asked some weeks into my pregnancy. I had not seen him come into the bathroom.
‘How is your wife?’ I said, pulling down my blouse.
He moved closer and lifted the blouse. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
I yanked the blouse down. ‘Why does there have to be something wrong with me?’
‘I’m just concerned. Why were you –?’
‘I told you. I am pregnant.’
Akin stepped back as though I had hit him in the jaw. He stared at me as if I had grown a horn on the bridge of my nose. Then he laughed. It was a short sound that would haunt me in my sleep.
‘Have you been having sex . . .’ The laughter died with a gurgling sound in his throat. ‘. . . with another man?’
‘I do not understand what you are saying.’
His Adam’s apple bobbed furiously, threatening to burst through his skin and splatter blood all over the white tiles on the bathroom floor.
‘We both know you can’t be pregnant. I have not even touched you in months. Except you . . . you . . .’ His mouth hung open, but no words came out.
I walked out of the bathroom, dashed downstairs and out of the house before he could follow me. I needed the fresh night air to clear my head and the moon in the sky to renew my faith.
Akin did not respond when I greeted him the next morning. His hand trembled as he stirred sugar into his coffee.
‘I am starting antenatal today,’ I said.
The cup of coffee was halfway from his lips. It fell on the table and soaked the white tablecloth with brown liquid.
‘How could you cheat on me, Yejide?’
‘I do not understand what you are talking about,’ I said and bit into a piece of toast.
He laughed. ‘So, this is an immaculate conception? And what shall we call this child? Baby Satan? When will a demon appear to inform me in my dream?’
I slapped the toast on a plate. ‘So now you can talk? You can blurt it all out? Who married another woman? In this house, who married another woman, tell me? Tell me now! Which bloody cheat did that?’
He traced the brown coffee stain with his thumb. ‘We’ve talked about that, we’ve settled it.’
I was so angry I could hardly breathe. I stood up and leaned across the table to stick my face in front of his. ‘OK now. Something else is settled. I want a baby and since you are too busy at your new wife’s place to try and get me pregnant, I can get a baby from any man I want.’
He
